in your blood
by The Star Room
Summary: Shaken and injured, Peter flies back to the only woman he knows will understand. Maybe he should have taken the stairs instead of stumbling through her open window, but, hey. Here she is.


When Peter thumps his head against her window, he's expecting her to be shocked. He's expecting the typical girlfriend response—_Oh, Peter, what on Earth happened? Who hurt you? God, come here, we have to get you to a hospital._

In truth, that's what he wants. That's exactly why he came here, rather than Aunt May's or a quickie medical clinic. He wants, in some way, to be coddled. To be looked after. He wants a girl—he wants _Gwen Stacy_—to look at him with that deep care and worry, that glint in the eye that a woman reserves for only one man. He wants to matter to her.

He smiles through his exhaustion, opening the window and sliding into her room with the soft colors and light streaming onto the bookshelves. She doesn't notice at first. She's busy tapping away at her laptop, her lower lip caught beneath her teeth as she focuses.

"You know, you should really start trying the front door," she says, as she swivels around in her desk chair. "It's a little less creepy."

She grins, and her face is caught by momentary sunset, a split-second wink of brilliance. Subconsciously, Peter wonders if anyone has ever been this happy to see him before.

But her smile disappears with a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes graze over his chest, at the deep claw-marks slashed into his costume. The blood oozing from his body is almost indistinguishable—it mixes with the red spandex. But Gwen sees it. She sees it, and Peter sheepishly stumbles into an armchair.

He's embarrassed. God knows why, but he's embarrassed that a giant tyrannical Lizard just ripped out thin chunks of his flesh.

"Peter," Gwen whispers, and this is what he wanted, isn't it? He wanted her to be concerned. He wanted her to take care of him. He wanted to be the wounded soldier and she the beautiful nurse. But he hates seeing that fear perched on her brow, pushing her forehead into folds.

"I'm fine, really," he sputters. He knows how ridiculous it sounds. He knows he's really not fine, and that the way he's slumped into her chair, bleeding onto the velvet is incredibly awkward. But everything he's ever said to Gwen Stacy has been ridiculous or awkward, and he's starting to get used to it.

"No, it isn't," she tells him. "Stay right there."

Moments later—or maybe it's hours; Peter isn't really paying attention—Gwen is pressing a warm washcloth against his wounds. It stings like something crazy (a couple of Uncle Ben's more creative curses slip through his teeth), but after a few minutes he forgets the pain. It fades to background noise, an annoying buzz that's present but easily ignored. He has a nice distraction, after all.

He watches her, as she wipes away his blood. He likes memorizing her. He likes observing her natural movements and nervous twitches, things he could never capture in a Debate Team photograph. Like this: her pinky shakes every few seconds; he can feel it drum against his skin. Or this: the bangs on the left side of her face are slightly longer than the ones on her right. Her lip gloss is smudged in one corner, a pink-purple dot that looks like a tiny bruise. She has two moles on her face, at a perfect diagonal line from one another. She's pale but it's a nice kind of pale. He likes pale. Pale is pretty.

He closes his eyes, because he doesn't need them to see. He can hear her, he can smell her, he can taste her. He can feel her feet against his thighs, the way she's hovering beside him, her nose dipped down towards his. He can shiver at her hand on his chest. It's almost digging into one of his cuts, and it hurts but he can't care.

Her breath tickles the hairs on his upper lip, the hairs he hasn't shaved in a few days; time's ran away from him. It's been an insane few weeks.

Peter leans into her. He wants to grip her sides in his scratched hands, to cup her face in his palms. He tries to kiss her, like he did on the rooftop, but she leans away and tells him, "No."

A rather hazy, dim-witted response echoes from his mouth: "Yes."

"No, Peter."

"Yes, Gwen."

"Listen to me," she says, and he does. He opens his eyes, sees her anxious expression. He listens, lets his arms drop from her waist.

Gwen Stacy tells Peter about her father, about the uniform he presses every evening, about the gun he straps to his hip. She tells him about her constant uncertainty, wondering if her father will make it home from work that day. She tells him about waiting on the staircase, wondering if the shift was over yet, wondering if the police scanner was ever going to shut up.

Peter knows what she's really saying. She's telling him _I like you, but I can't live everyday thinking you might come into my room with a bullet through your neck._

And he's been thinking about that himself. What is he really getting into? How much can he really do? Yes, he's more than a man now. Men can't jump across buildings and lift 10 tons of steel. But still – he's just a kid from Queens. A high-school student with no real fighting experience and no hardened skull. He isn't Captain America or the Hulk. He's still just as vulnerable as the guy next door.

He looks down, takes one of her hands in his own. He turns it around, sliding his thumb across her nails. His blood—_Spider-Man's blood_—runs across her index and ring finger. He cups her cheek and brings her face forward, so that their foreheads are touching. And he can't deny that sudden swell in his chest, the weird puff of air and vitality that fills his lungs and diaphragm and heart and ribs.

Because he's reversed now. He came in here, wanting to be cared for like a sick child. And now he's looking into Gwen's green-brown eyes, wanting the exact opposite.

Faith changes things.

He has to keep being Spider-Man. Because now he wants to protect her, to keep that precious blood inside her fair skin, to keep that sunset smile alive and thriving. There's no other option.

"I have to," he says, and that's all he needs to say.

Somehow, she understands.

He tucks a piece of tangled hair behind her ear. He smiles, trying to make light of a situation he knows is tense and terrifying.

"Hey. Hey, let's get out of here."

She smirks. "Peter, if I get caught, my parents will kill me."

He looks at her head-on, with both a deep empathy and a horrible mischievousness.

"Trust me. You won't get caught."

* * *

An hour later, he's shot her halfway to the moon and back. Her hair is windswept, her cheeks are flushed. They've gone out into the night by the pull of a thread. A silver lining, both literally and metaphorically.

They soar above skyscrapers and midnight, and she leans her head back and laughs. It tumbles into the darkness, flits among the cars and satellites of Queens. He's happy to share this world with her. It gets lonely, when you're the only man who can fly.

He takes her to a few of his favorite places. Gwen keeps her arms cinched around his waist, and Peter thinks he could get used to this. He could get _so _used to this.

The docking station. The rooftop of Il Toscano. The bridge. The Empire State Building. He takes her to the cliché places and the cat corners, the little-known crevices that only a spider could discover. He connects the stars with webs and wit, telling her stupid jokes and childhood stories, showing her that Peter Parker and Spider-Man are one and the same. There is no dual identity. There's a teenager, shaped by death, disappearance, demise, devastation, discord and discovery. Renewal.

And maybe, almost happiness.

Of course he kisses her. They stand on broken shingles and share tales without whispers. Her fingertips lace across the nape of his neck; his fingertips sidle up the small of her back. That's when he feels most like the hero. Not because he's "winning her," but because he's falling for her. Peter never won Gwen. He lost to Gwen. He lost in a pathetic landslide.

He takes her back home, helps her in through the window, tells her goodnight. She does the same. He stumbles back home in a stupor, and tonight Aunt May doesn't ask him where he's been. One look at him, and she already knows.

After all, she knows what love looks like on a Parker.

* * *

_Author's Note:_ This is a story I posted about a year ago on an old account of mine, and thought I'd upload it once again. Hope you enjoy!


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